Gerald Seymour - Holding the Zero

The tears streamed on Haquim’s face. Gus took his grimy handkerchief from his pocket, wiped them away and made smears on the other man’s cheeks.

The handkerchief was wet in his hand as he watched the jeep leave, watched it until it was small then gone into the mist that was thrown up at the cooling end of the day, and he thought of the helicopters.

They saw the cars speed through the road block with their escorts, then came the bigger column of lorries, pick-ups and jeeps, laden low with men.

‘What’s going on here? The fucking yellow bastards are running!’ Mike exploded.

‘Looks like the stakes have gotten too high,’ Dean whined.

‘It was madness, we should never have tried. Expensive madness!’ Gretchen cried.

The dust from the wheels of the column spattered over them. The faces of the men told a story of defeat.

‘I haven’t seen her,’ Gretchen said.

‘Probably long gone, probably gone to wash her goddam hair,’ Dean said.

‘I’ll wring her neck with my own fucking hands, if I ever get sight of her,’ Mike said.

The Russian came and spilled down from the back of an open vehicle. They swarmed around him. He shouted that it was a matter beyond his control, that the war was over, finished.

‘Where is she?’

He did not know. Maybe they cared to go and look for themselves, to walk down the road through the artillery bursts and search for her. Himself, he was leaving. He reached into his back pocket and heaved out the bulging roll of banknotes, unwound the elastic band holding the roll tight, and threw the notes high in the air for the wind to catch. He let them scrabble for them.

The cheeks and jowl of Lev Rybinsky quivered in misery. ‘Your loss is that of a distant cousin, a mere story – my loss is that of a son. I have lost the chance of gaining the licences to exploit the minerals here. If you want to go and look for her then go. I am leaving.’

When they had collected all of the money they climbed into his car and joined the tail of the long column heading north towards the mountains.

The drone was in his ears. He had his back to the road but it was bad for Joe Denton to try to work while he was distracted. Over his shoulder, on the road, was the grind of the vehicles. The minefield was more difficult to work in than he had expected. A part of the meadow had a shallow dip in it, from long years of winter rain. The soil had been pushed by the rain flow to the side, and had buried the tripwires of the V69s. The Italian ones were the most dangerous of all the mines he cleared, and particularly dangerous when the tripwires were buried. The killing range was a radius of 27 yards. When the tripwire was touched – and the tension in the buried wires gave them a hair-trigger condition – the initiator charge hurled the V69’s core vertically upwards to a height of 18 inches above the ground, then a restraining wire detonated the core, throwing out thousands of tiny metal cubes. If he fired a V69 then the helmet with the visor covering his face would be lacerated, and his protective vest would be shredded. More than any of the mines he worked on, Joe detested the V69s: too many times he had seen the child amputee who had wandered out over other meadows to pick flowers, and men and women who had gone to round up cattle herds and now limped on crutches, or to harvest apples from orchards and now wore the hideous lifeless artificial legs. Clearing the long-laid mines was not work for a man suffering distraction.

All the time the approaching drone had been in his ear he had been excavating the lie of a tripwire with a trowel and a slim metal probe. He stopped, caught his breath and watched the column on the road, then crawled back along his cleared channel between the pegs.

The lorries, pick-ups and jeeps lumbered along the narrow track. He saw the faces of many men, quiet and without passion. He stood at the side of the road, scanned those faces and looked for Gus.

At the end of the convoy was a mud-spattered Mercedes, then came Sarah’s two pickups with the bright new paint of Red Crescents on the doors and bonnets. Joe waved her down. He saw casualties on stretchers in the vans, but they were not full – and yet the army retreated.

‘What happened?’

She was tough, old Sarah, the one who liked to say she’d seen everything misery could throw at her, and she gibbered.

‘They took the crossroads. The Iraqis fell back, damn nearly gave it to them. She was wrong, she – the woman, Meda – promised there would be no tanks. It was a trap, the soldiers fell back and left the peshmerga out in the middle of a killing zone, with the tanks to do the killing. Your sniper – and your mines – together they stopped the tanks.

The pick-ups would have been full, and some more, if your sniper hadn’t listened well to what you said. The casualties stayed minimal… They should have been going for Kirkuk tomorrow morning, but the warlords called the whole bloody thing off. They’ve quit and taken their people with them.’

‘Have you seen him?’

Sarah said, ‘Most didn’t, but some stayed – that’s what I was told. The some are the misfits, the useless and the thieves, what the warlords don’t have on their payroll. She hasn’t come out, and he’s with her.’

‘How many are left, to go to Kirkuk?’

‘What I was told, it’s around three hundred.’

‘Then they’re best forgotten,’ Joe said. ‘You won’t see them again. When you forget, it doesn’t hurt.’

The pick-up pulled away. He saw that she bit her lip. The dusk was coming on, and he went back, so carefully, into the minefield to collect the gear he had left there. In the morning he would finish with the buried tripwire. *** He had lain a long time on his bed, until the darkness blacked out the beaming smile of the President on the wall in front of him.

Alone, but for his dog, his sense of duty burdened him.

Major Karim Aziz tried to analyse the priorities of duty. Was his first duty to his wife and children, and their safety? Was it to the soldiers who would stand at barricades in the Kirkuk suburbs and fight the woman and her remnant force, regardless of their own future? Was his supreme duty to the great and historic people of Iraq?

If his duty was to his family, he should slip away, drive in the night to Baghdad and take them as fugitives on the hazardous journey to the Turkish or Iranian frontiers. If he failed they would all be killed. If he succeeded he abandoned his duty to the soldiers at the barricades, and to the people of Iraq. Duty was his life, the prop on which he had leaned for so long. He drifted close to exhausted sleep. The dog snored contentedly on the mat by the far wall. Above his duty to his family and his soldiers and his people was the image of the sniper – faded at first, then clearing – sitting and watching and mocking him.

The thought of the sniper caught him. He tossed. His hand found the shape in his breast pocket of the letter written to his wife. He shook on the bed. His chance to fulfil his duty lay upon the courage of the wretch in a cell. The wretch would know of him, could denounce him to staunch the pain. His duty was to confront the sniper. It was his supreme indulgence to crave the aloof, alone, personal battle with the sniper – if the wretch gave him time.

He pushed himself off the bed. With his Dragunov, his backpack and his dog, he went out into the night – past the dull lights illuminating the cell block – to find the woman who would lead him to the sniper, if he was given the time.

‘Still here?’

‘Yes.’

‘Not running?’ A chuckle whipped her voice.

‘No.’

‘Should I apologize?’

Gus said calmly, ‘Not necessary.’

‘Apologize because my judgement was wrong?’